Paper prepared for presentation at the Fifth Conference of the International J.A. Schumpeter Society on Economic Dynamism: Analysis and Policy Münster, Germany, August 17-20, 1994 Recent quests for ecological tax reform are difficult to evaluate from an economic point of view, as they typically...

Ecological taxes are categorically different from the classical taxes which seek to extract a certain revenue at a minimum excess burden. Classical taxes are levied so as to interfere with the market based allocation of recourses as little as possible. Ecological taxes, on the other hand, are...

We address the valve location problem, one of the basic problems in design of long oil pipelines. Whenever a pipeline is depressurized, the shutoff valves block the oil flow and seal the damaged part of the pipeline. Thus, the quantity of oil possibly contaminating the area around the pipeline...